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Although the spotlight at Saturday’s annual Lincoln-Reagan Dinner at The Country Club was on State House Speaker Cameron Sexton, First District Congresswoman Diana Harshbarger managed to make an appearance.

“Everywhere I go, I’m talking about Hamblen County,” Harshbarger said. “It’s a power county. It’s a small county, but to me it’s mighty. You are a powerful county in what you do innovation-wise as in manufacturing. We can take a lesson from that, everybody can. ”

Harshbarger brought the Republican faithful up to date about legislation in Washington.

A hearing was held Thursday in the Energy and Commerce Committee centering on the banning of the “Tik-Tok” mobile application in America, which brought TikTok chief executive officer Shou Zi Chew to Washington.

“If anything would bring the republicans and democrats together, it was a hearing on TikTok,” Harshbarger said. “It is a national security threat. When President Trump tried to ban TikTok, then President Biden is trying to do it, what are the chances of the Chinese Communist Party coming out with a statement Thursday morning that they are against the sale of TikTok?”

The Chinese Communist Party made up a project called the “Texas Project” that would have looked like TikTok would be operated by Oracle, a software giant in Silicon Valley.

“These are American companies,” Harshbarger said. “Do you see what they’re trying to do? They are trying to lull us into the falsity that we’re going to have a great firewall built by a Texas company. There are 150 million people in this country who have TikTok on their phones. Since 2018, (the Chinese) has been building a database. It’s detrimental to the security of our country.”

Harshbarger said that there were many influencers flying into the U.S. to try to get government officials to change their minds about banning it.

“Not one democrat or one republican veered off the course of telling him, ‘This is not what we want for our country,’” she said. “Now that China said that you can’t sell it, we’re going to have to do something to ban it. There is bipartisan support to do that.

“Just know that we’re up there doing the work,” Harshbarger said. “We’re not sitting on our laurels. Everything we needed to get pushed through, we’re pushing it through and getting it voted on because we know 2024 is around the corner. We need to take the Presidency back, get a bigger majority in the house and also take the senate. If we don’t wake up and counteract what (the other party) is doing in the righteous way and shed light on how they’re doing their elections (election equity), it’s not equity.”

Harshbarger said that Tennessee does a good job on its elections.

“We need to turn the vote out,” she said. “(The other party) wants to divide us between President Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Florida), who hasn’t said that he’s even going to run. Make no mistake the other party has a plan.”

Harshbarger said that a bill to abolish the U.S. Department of Education recently failed in Congress.

“Let the states decide,” she said. “We know better than the federal government.”

Harshbarger also said that the recent bailout of Silicon Valley Bank will cost citizens more in banking fees and other taxes.

“You’re going to have to pay higher fees when banking with your regional bank,” she said.